


A Debt Paid

by Cupcakemolotov



Series: mini-drabbles [54]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Life Debt, Minor Character Death, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 13:36:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14749859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cupcakemolotov/pseuds/Cupcakemolotov
Summary: When Caroline was fourteen, she saved Klaus Mikaelson's life.





	A Debt Paid

**Author's Note:**

> Human Caroline saves Klaus' life somehow, he goes crazy trying to keep safe the girl who keeps on bumbling into danger and not noticing.

Caroline woke in apartment not her own, the pillow soft beneath her cheek. There was a blanket covering her from the shoulders down, but she hadn’t been tucked beneath the sheets. Swallowing heavily, she didn’t need her brand new senses to tell her whose scent lingered in her lungs.

Klaus had been part of her life for a decade now. Dangerous, horrifyingly homicidal, and prone to awful jokes, she’d known him since she was fourteen. An afternoon careening through the woods in mystic falls with Tyler Lockwood and his new ATV’s had changed her life irrevocably when she’d slammed into a woman who’d appeared out of nowhere.

Esther Mikaelson has died on impact, and Caroline’s life had never been the same. Later, Tyler would tell her of the wolf who’d been chained to the ground, the way she’d been thrown directly into the circle binding him. Klaus would smile at her with terrible dimples and tell her she’d saved him. That his mother’s death had twisted the magic, and when her blood had mingled with his, it had tied them together.

A life debt, he’d call it. A terrible, dangerous thread that bound them together. Caroline had learned quickly and early that Klaus was no guardian angel. Her murderous shadow paid his debt as he saw fit, and with devastating consequences. But learning that he couldn’t harm her, that the chains that bound them wouldn’t allow it, meant she’d learned to be reckless with him if not herself.

She’d always known it’d eventually bite her in the ass. A life debt was not something that could last forever. One day he’d pay it, the magic between them would break, and she’d be forced to deal with the consequences of their personal chessboard. As she’d gotten older and forged her own path, she’d learned just how dangerous those consequences could be.

It’d be impossible not to be curious about him. Klaus was old, a fascinating resource for her history homework when she could wheedle details out of him, a absolute nightmare during her art history classes, and so gorgeous it hurt to look at him sometimes. Her teenage hormones had ran rampant but she’d brushed them off. Klaus toyed with emotions like they were disposable, treated lust like a weapon, and mingled pain with pleasure. There was no sweet without a sting and no promise without a threat.

He studied humans the way others watched insects. She’d always been certain that if he could have peeled her flesh from bone, ground the magic from her by force, he’d have done so. The blade behind his eyes promised more than death between them.

For years he’d warned her to be careful, and not never find herself in his world. The first time she’d understood the threat had been the Summer before college. He’d stood with his fingers wound in her curls, blood on his lips as her ex-boyfriend bleed out at her feet

“Die human, Caroline,” he’d murmured,eyes dark and devouring in the moonlight. “Any other death will put you in my world and in my hands, and you of all humans understand that danger, do you not?”

She’d thought she had.

Then Tyler had betrayed her.

Sitting up, she swallowed as Klaus appeared in the doorway. His curls were damp against his forehead, and his smile was a dangerous, satisfied thing that left her stomach trembling. She didn’t have to ask to know that Tyler was dead. So were the witches that had overseen her change into a vampire. Teeth sliding against her lip, she tried not to shiver when he spoke.

“Well now, sweetheart,” he murmured as dimples creased his cheeks, gaze blazing with something terrifying and arousing. “This does change things.”

She didn’t know if it was a promise or a threat.


End file.
